New Belgium decades of prioritizing sustainability to get here

New Belgium Brewing is known for its sustainable business practices

New Belgium Brewing is located in Fort Collins, Colorado

It’s taken New Belgium decades of prioritizing sustainability to get here and now their flagship beer, Fat Tire Ale, is the first U.S. beer to be certified carbon neutral.

In the 90s, the brewery became the first to power its business with wind-generated electricity credits. In the early 2000s, the company installed Colorado’s largest privately-owned solar array at the time.

“We’ve long been on this path towards carbon neutrality,” said Katie Wallace, the brewery’s director of social and environmental impact.

A big challenge is combining their efforts of direct emissions reductions with the purchase of carbon offsets, “in the areas where we’re kind of stuck,” said Wallace.

The offset purchases will sponsor carbon-sequestration efforts through forest management, regenerative agriculture, and renewable energy. Wallace said the goal is to support projects that will help the company continue its work to decrease direct emissions, ones “that transform our own supply chains.”

New Belgium’s goal is to have all its beers certified carbon neutral by 2030. Wallace said they’ve learned a lot from this first step.

For example, to minimize its carbon footprint, New Belgium has made a deep commitment to renewable energy, powering the brewery with wind power and producing electricity with solar and biogas technology. It also developed the first carbon footprint study for beer and has donated millions of dollars to climate and environmental causes.

“It’s a pretty big undertaking because we’re not only talking about the emissions at our own brewery,” Wallace said. “We’re talking about the emissions at the barley farms and our malting facility, the trucks that transport our raw materials and our beer. Refrigeration, manufacturing, and packaging. We’re looking at the entire life cycle.”

Carbon neutral certification enables companies to provide transparency around their carbon footprint, illustrate their efforts to reduce carbon emissions throughout their operations, and gain credit for offsetting their remaining footprint through the purchase of carbon credits.

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